


Hideous Sweaters Need Not Apply

by romanitas



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2015-12-28
Packaged: 2018-05-09 21:47:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5556662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romanitas/pseuds/romanitas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sweaters are, apparently, an old Earth winter tradition. Abby decides to revitalize the custom. Bellamy “son of a seamstress” Blake is kind of offended.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hideous Sweaters Need Not Apply

**Author's Note:**

> from the prompt: "bellarke, MY MOM KNITTED YOU A JUMPER" which ok. aurora making a sweater would have been the easier option here. abby trying to knit is the better one.

“Don’t laugh.”

Bellamy looks at Clarke, and if he were the type, this would be the ideal situation to laugh. He does enjoy doing the opposite of what people tell him to.

“What about a chuckle?”

She lightly elbows him, but she looks – awkward? Nervous in a way that isn’t actually nervous, but it isn’t quite embarrassment either. Uncertain. “My mom made you a present.”

There are several words that when strung together don’t form a sentence Bellamy ever expects to hear, and that is one of them. He’s flabbergasted, for too long to be cool, so he just spits out the first thing that comes to mind. “What.”

He and Abby are civil at best. They argued on and off after Clarke left them both, but helping run the camp became more of his priority, and over time they reached a level of truce. She listens to him far more than she used to, and he’s not about to question it, but he’s not about to stop calling her out when necessary just because she started being polite. They both command respect born from different means, and both their hands are stained, but it doesn’t mean they’re about to kick it back and bond. They don’t speak much, generally, save council meetings, and even then he’s more likely to glower at her than smile. The delinquents are always what he fights for, not her.

“Remember what I said about not laughing?” Clarke reminds him, giving him a pointed state.

“I think I’m too busy wondering if the radiation finally got to me to laugh.”

Clarke elbows him again. “That’s even worse! She – I think she was trying to be nice. She worked really hard on it.”

He doesn’t gape at her, but it’s a close thing. “Let me get this straight. Your mom, your _mother_ , didn’t just get me a present. She _made_  it.”

“Apparently it’s some old Christmas tradition. She’s been really into figuring out old Earth habits the last few weeks. It is December.”

“There has to be better ways to spend her time.”

“Bellamy,” she chastises mildly, but he just crosses his arms, unaffected. She lost the right to chastise him and hasn’t earned it back yet. “Look, she’s trying, okay? And you’re still not allowed to laugh.”

“I can’t laugh if I don’t even know what it is.”

Clarke draws in a quiet breath, like she’s preparing herself for something worse than gift giving, but she finally brings it out from behind her. It isn’t wrapped, save for a drawstring woven around it several times and tied in a bow, so he can tell it’s fabric. He gives Clarke one more skeptical look before untying it carefully, not because he wants to be careful so much as the whole situation is still throwing him off.

By the time it’s unraveled, the fabric unfolds on its own, and Bellamy finds himself staring at a sweater.

Or at least, he thinks it’s a sweater. It has the correct basic shape, but Bellamy Blake is the son of a seamstress, and he spent large portion of his childhood learning from his mother the same as his sister did. At first glance, the sleeves are uneven, and one is wider than the other. The collar is more jagged than it should be, and the stitches are disproportionate. There’s a pattern on the chest, but it just looks like a literal splatter of paint; he thinks it might have been intended to be a tree.

“Is this supposed to be a sweater?” He doesn’t mean to sound so judging. But he is. He definitely is. His mother taught him better than that.

Clarke huffs a little. “It _is_  a sweater.”

“This is not a sweater.”

She makes another annoyed noise. “I think I’d prefer you just laugh.”

“Why the hell did she decide to make me a _sweater?_  Her stitching is probably better applied elsewhere. Like skin.” It’s a roundabout compliment, or at least he chooses to think so. He may not like her much as a person, but Abby Griffin is still an excellent doctor.

Clarke looks at him disappointingly, and it only gets to him a little bit. She’s been back for months, and he forgave her long ago, but it doesn’t mean her choice was made irrelevant, that all her time away didn’t leave gaps between them. It’s in the little things despite the connection that’s still there. But underneath the disappointment, her cheeks are rosy. Bellamy brushes it off as the cold, even though he knows it can’t be all. “It was supposed to be a good gesture.”

He frowns, because he’s an asshole, but he likes to think he’s not a total dick. It’s not Abby’s fault she’s a terrible seamstress. “She does know I can make one myself, right?”

Clarke hesitates, biting the corner of her lip. “She might not, actually. It’s not like people come to you first when they need a hole in their pants fixed. I told you – it’s mean to be a gift. She worked really hard on it.”

He holds it up and works really hard on recognizing the merits of it. “Okay.” He can accept that Abby decided to make a sweater. It’s not the strangest thing. It’s the other part that keeps catching him off guard. “But why me?”

Clarke’s cheeks get darker, and now Bellamy really knows it’s not just the cold. “I said it was an old tradition, right? Holiday sweaters, they were given out to family.”

If she’s expecting a big moment of revelation, it doesn’t hit him. If anything, he feels a little guilty, because not once in his life on the ground has he ever considered Abby anything remotely like family. She was a pain the _ass_  when the Ark first came down, and he had plenty of spiteful thoughts to spare in her direction. “Clarke –” he starts, because how can he possibly accept it, if that’s the case?

“Stop,” she says crossly. “She’s not expecting you to run into her open arms or anything. That’d freak me out as much as her _and_ you.”

“Then what _is_ she expecting?”

“I don’t think she’s expecting anything. She just – wanted to do something nice for you.” She hesitates, bites the side of her lip again. It’s a habit she picked up off in her time alone, he’s noticed. “She knows how important you are to me, and she knows what you’ve done for everyone here. I guess that’s where the family idea came from.”

And, well, there’s the big moment. It’s still a fucking hideous sweater, and he is probably never going to wear it barring extreme circumstances, but he can’t really argue with that.  It’s clearly some sort of peace offering, or just – recognition of who he is to Clarke. Even if he’s still trying to refigure out that part for himself.

Her face keeps red, and more importantly than Abby making it, this is a big moment for Clarke too. Because that’s it, isn’t it? No matter what pushed them apart, they came back together because Clarke is his family. The sweater, the hideous poorly made sweater, is Abby’s roundabout way of finally recognizing that.

Bellamy looks at it again and makes a face, because he’s still kind of offended by it. He needs to say something in return, anything. But his throat feels tight. There is his world before the ground, in which there was only Octavia. And then there is after – which isn’t to say his sister is anything less than top priority, but it does mean his world has expanded, that Clarke has become another piece of it he can’t live without.

“I didn’t need a sweater to tell me that,” he says at last, voice quiet.

Instead of getting annoyed, Clarke just smiles softly at him. “Neither did I.”

“Apparently your mom did,” he adds on dryly, because he is incapable of keeping the moment, and it’s easier to drop dumb remarks.

“You should probably wear it, at least once,” she teases. “Show some gratitude.”

“Not happening.”

She grabs his hand suddenly, squeezing it, looking at him like what she needs to say next is important. “I don’t care what my mom thinks, you know that right? Whether she’s okay with it or otherwise.”

It takes him a good long few seconds of quiet, of teetering close feeling overwhelmed, before he finally squeezes her fingers in return. “Yeah, in case you haven’t noticed, I couldn’t care less either.”

“Just don’t be an ass about the sweater.”

“I think the sweater speaks for itself.”

“C’mon, Bellamy, it’s not that bad.”

He holds it up with one hand, considering his other is still in Clarke’s, but the look he gives her is flat and unimpressed as she tries hard not to laugh. He doesn’t need to comment. It’s that blatantly awful.

“Okay, fine. Maybe her technique could use a little work.”

“I don’t think there’s any technique to begin with, Clarke.”

“Now you’re just being mean.”

“Honesty is the best policy.”

She punches him lightly in the arm, and then abruptly realizes she’s still holding his hand, releasing her grip quickly. She doesn’t apologize, but Bellamy doesn’t think he’d accept one anyway.

“Only when it’s convenient for you,” she remarks, still teasing.

“It’s impossible to lie about this sweater, even if I wanted to.”  He waves it again, sending a ripple down from the collar, and he wonders if it’d be possible to at least fix up the stitching. Supplies are limited, so it’s stupid to let it go to waste; even if he won’t wear it publicly, it might be good to sleep in, an extra layer in the cold, but not if the hems threaten to fall apart at his slightest stretch.

Clarke rolls her eyes. “Just tell her thank you, next time you see her, and then you can both go back to pretending the other doesn’t exist.”

“As though that wasn’t already my plan. I still can’t believe she made me a _sweater._ ”

She grins a little. “What’s that they used to say? Happy Holidays?”

“We have to find something to celebrate first,” he replies, wryly. He knows about Christmas, about Hanukkah, remembers the little signs of old traditions on the Ark, but none of that came back to the ground with them, and none of it was particularly significant like it might have once been anyway.

Clarke gives his hand another squeeze. “Being here and alive sounds like a good a reason as any.”

It’s a far cry from where she was after Mount Weather, and it’s a far cry from where he was too that he can agree. Not that he’s giving that godforsaken sweater any of the credit for the realizations, but yeah – at least right now, he’s glad to be alive, and he’s glad to have Clarke alive with him. But the words that come out don’t reflect much on that. “Better than Unity Day bullshit.”

She snorts, and he can appreciate the sound. It’s a happy sound, just like the grin on his face is a happy expression. Maybe Abby was on to something about traditions and goodwill, but Bellamy thinks he’d rather just start making up their own.

Hideous sweaters probably not included.


End file.
